You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes (34 page)

NEVERLAND WAS INTENDED TO BE MICHAEL’S
happy-ever-after. It wasn’t quite his romantic castle on a hill, but it was still perfectly removed from the outside world, and it had a breathtaking charm. I doubt there was a more magical place on earth away from Disney. I may have fewer memories of it than I do of 2300 Jackson Street and Hayvenhurst, but they are just as rich.

To this day when a warm breeze blows across my face and I hear water trickling from a fountain to merge with a child’s laugh, I’m back in my brother’s happy valley and I see him surrounded by children playing. I see him wearing one of his hats, sprinting across the freshly-mown grass beyond the swimming pool, armed with a water balloon or a pump-action water pistol, chasing and soaking the opposite ‘team’. I see him on the back row of the giant Pirate Ship at the theme park, waiting until it is suspended in its up-swing … and then he pelts everyone sitting below with candy.

I see him in the bumper cars driving better than he ever did on LA’s freeways, doubled up with laughter as we smash into him from all sides. I see him in the movie theatre, slouched back in his
chair, tossing popcorn in the dark at anyone on the first few rows – the last person they suspect is Michael. I see him walking around the grounds near the lake, holding an umbrella to shield himself from the sun, heading to the cluster of Indian tepees. I see him in a golf cart, customised to look like a mini Rolls-Royce or a Batmobile – complete with stereo sound-system.

I see him lazing at home with the ‘Michael Jackson image’ hung up in the wardrobe as he shuffles about the kitchen – morning or night – not so pristine in a white V-neck T-shirt, pyjama bottoms or sweat pants, and black velvet house slippers with a gold crest and the letter ‘J’ on the toe. I see him as clear as if it was yesterday. I see him as I never want to forget him.

And if, as you just read that,
you
see a grown man acting like a child – not conforming to how things should be and feeling free to let his inner-child run wild – then you, too, see the unashamed truth of who Michael really was, being himself in the one place where he was
allowed
to be himself.

How people judge this truth, and project
their
views of ‘normal’ behaviour, will always say more about them than it ever did about Michael. Take Martin Bashir, the British documentary-maker who brought his lack of understanding of anything child-like into Michael’s world in 2003. On camera, Michael told him how he loved to climb his favourite oak tree and sit in its branches and write songs, at one not just with nature but with his past: the tree outside our bedroom in Gary; the tree trunk he touched for good luck at the Apollo; Joseph’s twigs that taught us togetherness; and then my image that a tree is like our family – the parents are the trunk, the children its branches. ‘I love climbing trees,’ Michael told Bashir. ‘I think it’s my favourite thing. Having water-balloon fights and climbing trees.’

Bashir didn’t get it, so he projected his idea of normal: ‘Don’t you prefer making love or going to a concert? You really mean that? You
prefer
climbing trees and having a balloon fight?’ He would later remind Michael that he was, at the time, a 44-year-old man. And that was where this journalist’s ‘examination’ instantly failed:
regardless of whether or not others can identify with how Michael was, it doesn’t change
who
he was. The core fact is that my brother looked at life through a child’s eyes. Age, status, persona and other people’s expectations of him had nothing to do with it. He had a child’s heart and he never outgrew a child-like enthusiasm for fun – and
this
was why he had a natural affinity with children.

People with suspicious minds would turn this characteristic into something it wasn’t, but if you accept his child-like spirit, you are at the starting point to understanding him and his joy in ‘elementary things’. Is this ‘normal’? Probably not. But I’ll never forget a quote that someone once read to me: ‘Normal is just someone you don’t know very well.’ A privileged few knew Michael very well, and he was as ‘normal’ as can be when holding the cards that life had dealt him within an extraordinary life. Running backwards to chase after his childhood was the most normal thing in the world for him to do. Michael might not have fitted many people’s idea of ‘normal’, and that’s because his sense of compassion was rare. But to
truly
know him was to love him, and to see him was to appreciate what Neverland was, too: a toy town filled with innocence and fun. I always said that my brother might as well have been the offspring of Walt Disney or William Hamley or Frederick Schwarz. At face value, it really was as beautifully simple as that.

HOWEVER VISITORS APPROACHED NEVERLAND –
by air or road – one landmark guided them there. A mountain peak, with one side shaved clean and the other still thick with brush and trees, was the first thing we looked for in the distance either from the helicopter or from Highway 54 heading inland from the coast at Santa Barbara. If you kept your eyes on that highest point, which ducked in and out of view on the winding road, it was impossible to get lost. Michael named it Mount Katherine in honour of Mother because mountains represent something solid and serene and spiritually strong. Katherine Street ran in front of the train station, which he called Katherine Station. Mother was
celebrated in the detail and in the distance, always part of Michael’s landscape.

She was the first of the family to lay eyes on his new home, joining him after his European tour with
Bad
. As mother and son arrived at the property, they were greeted by two magnificent Clydesdale horses that pulled a Cinderella carriage driven by men wearing top hats. At the end of a winding road through open fields, she arrived outside the main house on the right. Huge oak trees cast shadows on the brick-paved forecourt and a statue of Mercury stood inside a decorative mini-roundabout. On her left, across the courtyard, were the guest-houses that overlooked a four-acre lake. Mother wasn’t surprised to find that Michael had chosen another Tudor-style property and the previous owner had done it up inside: oak walls and beamed ceilings with varnished wooden floorboards. Think dark oak tones, exposed brickwork, brass features and mullioned windows, and you have the feel of this dreamy home – a 13,000-square-foot residence, surrounded by canyon stone paths, shingle and manicured lawns as lush green as the finest golf courses in the world.

Michael also had rainbow flowerbeds again, the most spectacular being the Geneva-inspired giant flower clock on the grass slope beneath the train station – you reached it by following the driveway from the house up and around a slight incline. Inside the house, standing in the widest foyer, the life-size model butler stood to attention, holding his tray of cookies. To the left, there was a den-like room, with a grand piano that bore framed photos of the family and a five-feet-high miniature model of a medieval castle on the floor as its centrepiece – a château that Michael had his eyes on in France. To the right, there was a library, filled with the smell of old books and velvet photo albums. Finally he had the grand library that would make Rose Fine proud.

But what visitors probably missed as they first stepped inside that foyer was the big wooden door immediately to the right. It could almost have been dismissed as a tiny restroom, but this was the entrance to a long narrow hallway running along the front of
the property before it turned left and led to Michael’s quarters. Inside, there was a living room, bathroom, pinball machines and stairs to a bedroom. He also had a second bedroom – a master suite – upstairs in the main house, reached by the varnished staircase that climbed out of the foyer. Everything about the house was grand.

I stood on the stairs, on my first visit, taking it all in, and remembered the boy who had wandered around awestruck inside Mr Gordy’s Boston House.
Did you dream this back then? Is this what you were always shooting for?
I found one element of the answer downstairs in the country-style living room. There were huge self-portraits of Michael. One was of him being crowned, looking regal, another of him in military dress, decorated with medals and epaulettes, looking commanding. I had a flashback to Mr Gordy’s Napoleonic self-portrait and smiled.

Neverland was regal in its slick operation. It had its own small army of about 60 staff with seven or eight chefs in the kitchens, a housekeeping department, a team of attendants at the theme park, a crew of animal handlers for the zoo, and a host of gardeners and security. Michael even had his own health and safety officer, a fire department and fire truck, manned by two full-time fire-fighters.

I knew instantly why the house and its solitude appealed to Michael: it was the size of a planet compared to Hayvenhurst. Instead of having a limited suburban garden and being fenced in by a main road, he had acres to roam and the horizon was his boundary. He could leave his front door, go on a long walk and then take a morning drive in a golf cart. Neverland was as much about freedom as it was escapism. To place its vastness in context, the developed part of the ranch – including zoo, theme park and all buildings – probably covered something like 50 acres but that still left another 2,650. Michael would climb into his 4x4 truck and get lost in its beauty. When he drove away from the developed land, he could take numerous dirt roads, arrive in other valleys and still be on his land. It was almost cowboy country in
those parts – all oak trees, twigs, tumbleweed and brush – and you half-expected a convoy of wagon trains to appear, with land-grabbers on horseback to hammer their flags into the ground, vowing no one would take away their dream to own a corner of the world.

FROM THE OUTSIDE, NEVERLAND DIDN’T LOOK
much. Even when the brown gates slowly opened, you felt as though you were driving into a rambling game park, not a home. There was a private road with nothing but trees and fields for about half a mile. Then the first thing that came into view was Michael’s double-decker Neoplan motor-home, a jumbo bus parked and covered in its own court-yard on the left, waiting to be taken out on tour or to a video shoot. It was fitted out like the finest condo, with flat-screen TVs, sumptuous bed and sofas, and a big bathroom. On the upper deck, it had cream aircraft seats with burgundy piping – the windows were so high that when the vehicle was on the road, Michael said it felt ‘like you were flying.’ Even his tour bus was an experience.

Then the visitor arrived at the main grand entrance to the house, which was familiar to me because the black-and-gold wrought-iron gates were from my old house in Brentwood. They were put in storage after my neighbours had complained, ‘Living next to you is like living next to a Saudi prince.’ When Michael was looking for an impressive set of gates, he knew exactly where to come. He added the golden replica of the United Kingdom’s coat of arms: the lion and the unicorn and the motto
‘Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense’
which, when translated, apparently means ‘Shame be to him who thinks evil of it’. He posted that motto long before the police and Martin Bashir passed beneath the black archway announcing ‘Neverland’ in gold, with Michael’s name set within a crown motif. Michael had a fascination with royalty, and he absolutely
loved
the pomp and ceremony of the British monarchy. The entrance summed up Neverland for me: very Hollywood in its extravagance yet very English in its inspiration.

Just inside the gates, on the left, a little shop-front displayed candy and several mannequins in costume depicting old Hollywood and the 1950s period, an ornamental museum-like welcome. A few feet further on, you came to the track for the small train that toured the estate’s circumference, taking passengers to the theme park and the zoo. Bubbles and the Hayvenhurst menagerie had been joined by giraffes, elephants, lions, tigers, alligators, wolves, an orang-utan, a camel and every kind of reptile and South American bird you can think of, each housed in its own pen or cage. Not forgetting the Clydesdale horses. In the distance, you could see the main house but, before arriving there, you crossed a double-arched stone bridge, two lanes wide and spanning the narrowest stretch of the lake, where there was a mini waterfall near the flamingos – they roamed the banks as underwater jets spouted huge towers of water.

It was instantly obvious that you were entering a child-centric haven. Signposts warned ‘Be Careful, Children Playing’ and there were bronze statues of happy children: a child with a flute, a group of children dancing as a circle linked by hand, a girl pulling a boy’s arm, a kid hanging upside down from a rail, and a child kneeling down, playing with a dog. Inside the house, Michael had paintings of children from all over the world, black and white, from east to west. And all around the property, all the time, there was piped music: soothing instrumental pieces, strong with flutes and harp, and children singing, from the speakers that Michael had camouflaged as rocks and boulders.

Visitors could never tire of the amenities because, away from the zoo, theme park and quad bikes, there was also a two-storey arcade with every conceivable game and simulated ride, plus a tennis court, basketball court and a full-sized movie theatre that would put most local cinemas to shame. You name the movie, Michael had it, from modern-day smashes to Hollywood classics. If Blockbuster didn’t have a movie in stock, my brother would. You stepped inside the theatre foyer, and the ceilings vaulted about 30 feet. On one side of the entrance there was a glass case housing a
miniature animatronic version of Michael dancing to ‘Smooth Criminal’ and different buttons triggered different dance moves. There was also, of course, the biggest candy store, with yoghurt, ice-cream and popcorn on tap.

But the most incredible feature of the 50-seat theatre were the two rooms at the back of the screening room: one to the far left, one to the far right. Each had a window and a bed, oxygen tank and medical monitors. These were mini-hospital suites designed and installed with young cancer patients and terminally ill kids in mind. Unable to attend the theatre in the outside world, and too sick to sit in a chair, Michael wanted them to be able to lie in bed and enjoy the cinematic experience. Each child in each room had a bedside intercom that allowed them to speak with Michael, sitting just outside the window in one of the upper rows. Wheelchair ramps were built into every ride and facility because Neverland was designed not just with his own childhood in mind, but the childhood of others less fortunate. This was a side of Neverland that you never heard the media shout about, and whenever I heard the lie – from people whose knowledge was media-educated – that Neverland was some kind of predator’s lair to lure young children, I wanted to drag them here, into this theatre, into the inside of my brother’s heart, and make them see this truth about Michael’s humanitarian spirit.